


Pinion

by paperiuni



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: A Very Significant Bench, Canon Compliant, F/F, First Kiss, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Mention of Past Clary/Jace & Clary/Simon, Post-Episode: s02e14 The Fair Folk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 05:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17054477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: Clary grieves via art and demon-hunting, grows a very inconvenient crush, and finds a way under Isabelle's cool and collected facade.Or, a love story in charcoal and good intentions.





	Pinion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alistoney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alistoney/gifts).



> Written for lightwormsiblings/alistoney (♥) for the prompt "Clary x Izzy, a kiss for comfort". This turned into a minor monster and also went slightly off prompt. I hope it's pleasing all the same!
> 
>  **Content Note** : This fic discusses Izzy's yin fen addiction, but at a time when she's well on the road to recovery.

_The wind in the trees is whispering_  
_Whispering low that I love her_  
_She puts her hand over mine  
__Down in the lime tree arbor_  

 _Through every breath that I breathe_  
_And every place I go_  
_There is a hand that protects me  
_ _And I do love her so_

—Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

*

Something changes for Clary after the Seelie Court and the disastrous pair of kisses there.

Simon's distance sets her adrift. Jace has been through too much himself to be a pinnacle for her, either. The truth that dawns on her is this: Jace was the first to shine a light on her perilous new world. That pulled her to him, that heady mixture of faith and discovery that ran alongside the search for her mother. When she kissed him, wrapped in the barbed vines, there was spite and rue in the passion.

She cares. They both do. But whenever they're together it's a stormwind of a feeling, not a solid point to be found in the rush. At first it was thrilling. Now—

Now her mother's gone. The legacy she left is Clary's to puzzle out by herself. Now, heartbroken, Simon withdraws from Clary, and the sleepless nights whisper to her that _this is it_ , this is her lot, the Shadow World will steal her loved ones from her one by one.

She starts waking up earlier, sneaks into the training hall before five in the morning, double-knots her shoes and gets to work. Staff forms, sword strikes and parries. No one to correct her except the odd fellow insomniac. She smiles wanly in thanks and takes their pointers and beats on practice targets until her hands shake.

Being late to your secret destiny can really suck.

She buys art supplies with her stipend—surprise, Shadowhunters _do_ get paid, though she still isn't super clear on the specifics of Shadow World economies—and fills a manila folder with furious, scratchy charcoal pieces. Demons from the textbooks Izzy brings her from the library. Shadowhunters returning, limping and covered in ichor. The city from the Institute balconies, a sea of artificial light covering the dark horrors that move underneath.

Art was always her bliss. The satisfaction her messy, jagged drawings bring her doesn't have much to do with calm or joy.

She doesn't show them to anyone.

She sweet-talks Alec into giving her patrol duty—he doesn't take much persuading. They get on better these days, or maybe he gets on better with the world at large, and she's just enjoying the secondary benefits.

The other thankfully uncomplicated person in her daily life now is Isabelle. Though she talks to Luke almost daily, he's busy with the pack and the rising tensions in the Downworld.

Izzy, though, is there. She walks Clary through Institute databases and procedures and the library filing system, and meets her for breakfast like she's done since those first confused mornings when Clary still got lost getting to the kitchen.

Not exactly _ever since._ There were those weeks after their visit to the Adamant Citadel, when Izzy would get snappy and distant. Or miss breakfast or afternoon training. She'd be the first to exit and the last to arrive for briefings, a hair short of being late. Always just within the rules.

It slid past Clary then. A lot did, in the fugue of losing her mother.

When Izzy came back, bringing Sebastian Verlac with her, Clary allowed herself to feel only relief. To hug her friend tight and to be glad when she sat bleary-eyed in the mess, her sugar-saturated morning coffee her only comfort, and Izzy slid in beside her, her hair and face flawless, giving an impeccable impression that she just woke up like that.

Izzy was there. A piece of the world fell into place.

They gravitate back together. Izzy still kicks Clary's ass at staves and blades and hand-to-hand, but it never _feels_ like defeat when Izzy is also there to pull her up after a bout with a strong hand. Izzy takes the liberty of fixing Clary's ponytail with those same hands, drawing a fingertip through the hair at the nape of her neck, and Clary goes still, her breath in her throat.

Her heart rate only returns to normal when Izzy's safely gone, out on a mission where she can't make Clary's head spin.

It goes on: Izzy's knee against hers at dinner; bothering Izzy in her lab; giggling at some private joke in Ops until a senior officer gives them the stink-eye; the imprint of Izzy's body sprawled on her bedspread that she can't smooth away all day; the smell of Izzy's jasmine shampoo; the phantom of Izzy's finger against her neck.

Clary catalogs her like some sort of forbidden scrapbook, until she can't fight her conclusion anymore.

_I have a crush on Isabelle Lightwood._

Who wouldn't be a little in love with Izzy, with her beauty and cleverness and kindness? To be anything else just seems in bad taste.

Clary is probably biased on that account.

Now that she's thought of it, the terrible, wonderful truth, it seems to spark out of her like a static charge whenever Izzy so much as inclines her stupidly perfect head her way. As far as Clary knows, Izzy isn't even seeing anybody right now, which would work as a convenient deterrent, but no such luck.

Well. Izzy might not be into girls. She's only ever mentioned boyfriends, and even that word is half-flippant on her lips. Though, keeping in mind the amount of shit Alec has weathered from both familial and professional quarters since coming out, Izzy might not be eager to advertise being into girls in the Institute.

A part of Clary refuses that conclusion. Izzy is so unapologetically _herself_ : audacious, brilliant, and proud of it. They've been friends almost from the word go. If she were bi or pan or whatever, how could Clary not _know_? Clary's even brought up her own several times of kissing a girl, as a probably unsubtle nudge, but Izzy's never let herself be nudged.

In the end, all Clary has is speculation. Which helps not at all.

She hangs on to her drive to excel at shadowhunting, and it sees her through missions with relative success. Contrary to what pop culture suggests, scrapping with demons doesn't leave you room to stare dreamily at your teammates, even when their whip moves could make angels weep. Izzy's tendency for sudden post-danger hugs is more of a problem. Her habit of casually taking Clary's hand when they stroll down an Institute corridor is a problem. Izzy bringing cups of cocoa to Clary's first round of late-night watch duty is definitely a problem.

They sit in Ops, where the dimmed monitors thin the darkness into a sleepy blue shade. Izzy chatters about her own nights on watch like this, staring at the ancestors of these monitors, sneaking in chemistry journals to stave off the tedium.

"Chemistry journals," Clary says, with a face of doubt. "Those kept you awake?"

"We can't all be artistic souls like you," Izzy says and bites her lip, just inside the line of her lipstick. "Are you ever gonna show me what you're working on?"

Menaced from all sides, Clary toes Izzy's ankle under the desk in retaliation, and sends her to bed once the cocoa is gone.

Of course Izzy had to be the first person to ask about her drawings. Izzy's always known how to push her just enough to keep _her_ pushing the edge of her own comfort and ability. Strong, sure, sensitive Isabelle, with her fizzing wit and her wily ways of setting people at ease.

Isabelle, who never seems to need anything for herself.

The next night on dog watch, Clary smuggles in her pocket sketchbook and starts picking out subjects from around her. The guard at the foyer door gains a fanged, twisting shadow in her rough-stroked doodle. The steam from her mug grows grasping phantom hands on the paper.

Gradually she shifts into memories and into gentler impressions: a faded rose on Alec's desk, tucked half out of sight beside the desk lamp. Maia in silhouette, bent over a book in the Hunter's Moon, lingering after her shift. Izzy's hand on the desk, the wrist slender under the coils of her bracelet, a liminal shudder in it now and then.

In the morning, Clary peels the sketches from the book and hides them in the back of the manila folder.

She still gets bleak days, when everything blurs into a gray soup of not just grief but pointless misery and anger at the universe. At her mother for all the secrets she kept. At her father for _everything_ —though during a wallowing streak, Clary can get deep into lists of specific wrongs. Usually the best cure for those days is company. She'd call Simon, but Simon is off limits. Jace took her explanation of _no, I can't be with you either_ as well as could be hoped, but she's trying to keep distance until time cools both their tempers.

 _The whirlwind romance approach hasn't really worked for you. Is it the best idea to fall for somebody new right now?_ Let alone for the one steadfast friend she has at the moment.

Clary's good sense doesn't seem to get much of a say in this matter.

She can always talk Izzy into something innocuous, like a trip to the art supply store or an hour spent browsing at the Strand, or people-watching at the coffee shop near the pier. It'll be better than turning in circles inside her own head all day.

The problem is: Izzy isn't anywhere in the Institute. She's taken the day off. Alec's expression goes a little funny when he tells Clary this, but he's in the middle of Super Urgent Issue #27 or so for today, so she leaves him to it. A call and two texts to Izzy's phone go unanswered. Clary shoves off the instinct to take the necklace Izzy forgot on her nightstand and track her. If Izzy wants time alone, she's got her reasons.

Clary hies herself to the precinct instead, and gets Luke to take an extended lunch break and take her out for Ethiopian.

The empty place at the table still rings with silence, but they talk almost as if her mother were sitting with them: everyday conversation, little incidents, her latest exploits at demon-hunting. She burrows into Luke's hug like she were still ten and he could shield her from any evil the world holds, and then he has to get back to work. Mustering a smile, she waves him goodbye.

Her phone pings just as she's about to dip into the subway. Izzy's name is on top of the messages view.

_Battery Park. The bench._

Clary squints at the four words before they click. Once they do, she switches her route to the R train and gets off at Whitehall Street. The closer she is to the park, the greater the sense of haste in her grows. A cluster of tourists wander into her path and she cleaves rudely through them. Breaking into a run, she nearly tramples a foolhardy pigeon plucking at the remains of a dropped bagel.

She came here once with Izzy, early in the autumn; they were clutching their loot of emergency takeout, starved after a night spent chasing down a demon pack. There was a bench tucked under an elderly oak, its leaves barely hemmed with yellow.

They inhaled their food, sitting sideways on the bench with their feet tucked between each other, muddy boots and all. The night was bending toward dawn. Izzy reached to pat Clary's knee companionably, her hand light, lingering a little.

One more out of a thousand touches without hidden meaning.

Izzy is at the same spot. She sits at the left end of the bench with one foot up on the seat. Her hair is up in a tight bun, but long strands have slipped loose. She is twisting her bracelet back and forth; the action looks half conscious at best.

Her greeting withering in her throat, Clary drops down onto her own side. She guesses it's her side now. Izzy has—maybe—made this spot into a _thing_ without consulting her, and she's just rolling with the punches.

"Hey," she says when the silence has gone past the ten-second mark. "What's up?"

Izzy looks up. Under her oddly sedate makeup, her face looks ashen and drained. Her nail polish is chipped on the hand resting on her knee, as if she's been picking at it.

Clary really has no choice but to put a hand on Izzy's and squeeze. Izzy lets her do it, her mouth gentling into the ghost of a smile. "Hey."

Seconds pass again, slow as syrup, without either of them speaking. The tree above clings to its last wind-tugged leaves, brown and lacy and brittle. Clary's breath settles after her sprinting, but her heart clenches with misgiving.

"Is everything okay? You're worrying me a little."

That seems to cut through the shell Izzy's clamped around herself. She frees her hand and drops it in her lap. "I told myself I was gonna tell you today."

Clary should get a medal for keeping back the expression that nearly bursts through her apprehension. It probably still does something weird to her face, but Izzy doesn't seem to notice. Which is also weird, as Izzy notices just about everything Clary would rather keep under wraps.

Except for the tiny matter of Clary's unruly, unrequited feelings.

Unless this is it. Unless Izzy is about to—

Something doesn't add up. If Izzy was about to let Clary down gently, she wouldn't do it in a place like this. She'd look sympathetic and a bit sad, not disconcertingly like she hasn't slept a blink in two days. Drawing herself up, Clary leans toward Izzy until her angle is about at _concerned friend._

"You can tell me anything." She frowns for emphasis. "That's a given. I know I've been stuck in my own head a lot lately, but I'm here for you, okay?"

"I know," Izzy says, muffled. "Alec and Jace haven't said anything to you, have they? About me?"

"Um, no." Panic prickles at Clary. She squashes it mercilessly. "Is this about—a little ways back I thought you had a guy or something, and you didn't want to tell me yet. Back before Valentine attacked the Institute. You were gone a lot."

Izzy laughs, and there's rust in the soft sound. "I guess that's one way to put it. I've been trying to figure out how to tell you."

This is it then.

"You've listened to me moan about my love life for months," Clary says, only despairing a little bit. _If you conveniently ignore the latest twist to it. Which you will, because Izzy's in knots about something and you need to know what._ "You can complain to me as much as you want. I can even get us coffee first. I saw a street vendor by the gate."

"No, it's fine." Izzy shakes her head. The runaway locks of her hair flick with the motion. "Clary, I—I was addicted to yin fen. Vampire venom. It's a long story."

A shudder of horror and understanding travels up Clary's spine. Things click with painful clarity. Izzy's absence and distraction, the uncharacteristic biting comments, the tremor in her ever-steady hands.

How much more is there that Clary missed in her mourning, or the daze of the months she was with Simon, trying to grasp at the good left in her life with both hands?

A lot. More than a lot: she's missed something critical, something so profound that it made Izzy—she has no idea how Izzy even ended up using this yin fen stuff, whatever that is exactly, except a drug of some kind _._ Clary is clear enough on the addictive nature of vampire venom.

"Okay." Clary clears her throat when the word sticks. "Are you okay? You said 'I was'."

"I'm better." Izzy swipes a coil of hair behind her ear. "Simon helped me find a therapy group, actually. I had a meeting today."

"Oh. That's good. That's great. He would know, because of—"

"His mom. He told me."

"Right. So you talked to Simon. And Alec. And Jace. Which makes sense, because they're your brothers, and—" Clary's powers of control over her face are clearly exhausted. She grimaces. "Does everybody know except me?"

"Nobody knew. It was supposed to be for pain relief, just until my shoulder healed. But I got hooked. I found other ways to get venom." She inhales as if to go on, in that colorless, jagged tone, and Clary can't bear another word of it.

"Don't." She scoots to the middle of the bench, breaching the invisible boundary between them. "God. That was a jerk thing to say. It's not like you owe me a report."

"Maybe that'd help," Izzy says. "I'd know where to start writing one."

"This is way harder?"

"Mm-hm."

"If it helps you, go for it. I can just listen."

Izzy turns her head away. The story comes out of her in short paced sentences, like she were mentally rehearsing each one. There was the demon Valentine sent. The stubborn shoulder wound that wouldn't heal. An offer of _help_ from Aldertree—rage flares in Clary at that, but Izzy soldiers on, her voice dipping as she gets to her original supply of yin fen running out and her frantic hunt for more. Raphael enters the story, and Izzy's narration gets even more spare. He got her what she needed. _He helped me,_  Izzy puts it.Definitely not the same sense of the word as with Aldertree. Wherever Wrangel Island is, Clary vehemently hopes Alec actually got him banished there and that it sucks something awful.

She reaches a hand out to Izzy, and without looking, Izzy seizes it, their fingers making an untidy knot as Izzy lapses into silence.

Children shout on the lawn nearby. Gulls shriek in the air. The sounds seem muted, as if Izzy's quiet were deep enough to swallow them, too.

"I'm so sorry," Clary says. "I should have realized."

"That I was ignoring you because I was busy getting high?" Izzy's tone hides ice. She's polished it to a mirror shine, to trip anybody that dares to try cross to her. Their hands slide free of each other.

"That something was really wrong with you."

"Yeah," Izzy says, dithering. It's not like her. She's always precise, keen, as much a sharpshooter as Alec in her way. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters! Iz—this is _you_. Your life. You being okay. How can you possibly think I wouldn't care about that?" Clary's face goes hot with guilt and agitation. She's been a blind idiot—too wrapped up in her daydreams of Izzy to see how her friend is hurting.

"You've had a lot going on."

"Oh my god," Clary bursts out. "Just because you're always there for everyone else doesn't mean that you should deal with this alone. Why didn't you—"

"I didn't want you to know." It comes out in a rush. Izzy pulls herself straight, spine locked, chin level. "I felt better when you didn't know. There's this horrible thing I did, this stupid slip that could've ended up a lot worse than it did, and I just... wanted you to think better of me."

Clary stares at her.

"Did you really think I was gonna _judge_ you?" She sounds choked and eerie to her own ears. "Because you were in pain and needed it to stop?"

"You look at me and there's this light in your eyes, like you're happy about me, like you believe in me." Izzy's fingers clutch at her elbows, her knuckles bled to white spots by the tension in her grip. The curve of her cheek, her face turned away from Clary, trembles liminally. "I didn't want it to go away."

 _Like you're happy about me._ How is this conversation at once breaking Clary's heart and rattling all her buried hopes in their coffin? How did Izzy decide that they have a _place_ , a worn bench in Battery Park, and then bring Clary there just to spill the worst secret that's also, incidentally, been right under Clary's nose for weeks?

A secret that Clary is the last to know. Because she admires Izzy, relies on her, follows her example—quite possibly wants to kiss her stupid and breathless, at that. While that hasn't been in the cards, Clary's been happy to just be in her presence.

All this time, Izzy has fumbled her way through a dark and terrible episode she couldn't share with anybody. A weight that feels irremediably self-inflicted, that bends her proud, easy posture with shame and frustration.

"I have to show you something." The words are out before Clary can think twice. As soon as she speaks them, she knows they're true. "Back at the Institute."

A hasty planet probably revolves around its star somewhere in the universe before Izzy looks back at her, her wariness bruised with something that definitely contains surprise and maybe even hope. "Now?"

"Right now. Please just come."

Izzy doesn't take the hand that Clary reflexively lifts toward her, but she follows. They take the subway and the train seems to meander even as it shoots up Manhattan. Izzy falls in at her six—Izzy would laugh if she knew Clary thinks about it like that—as if they're on a mission, and maybe they are, hunting a demon without shape or form, one that can't be vanquished with the stab of a seraph blade.

By the time they're back in living quarters, Clary's heart is climbing up her windpipe. She's good at thinking fast. She's starting to think sustained planning is not her forte, even when it involves sustaining a bright idea against a rising tide of doubt.

At the threshold to Clary's bedroom, Izzy tarries. It shouldn't be any kind of boundary to her; Clary's made it clear she can always come in. They've lingered in that doorway so many times, unwilling to call a night done, sharing one more laugh before one of them heads to bed or out on patrol.

Clary dives into her closet and comes back holding the manila folder. It's thick with drawings now: the fabric ties holding it shut strain against the plenty.

She lets the sides of the folder spring free. Her sketches tumble onto the bed. Izzy's heels tap cautiously on the floor as she steps into the room.

"This is what's been in my head." Clary wipes stray charcoal dust from her fingers on her jeans.

Izzy drops onto her haunches by the bed and lifts the first picture: lamps reflected in the Hudson, with slitted, distorted eyes staring up through the darkness left between them. In another, ragged, torn feathers dangle from bare trees in a park, blood running down the pale trunks. Nightmares painted onto the familiar facade of the city.

"You didn't want me to look at these." Izzy leaves through the loose pages, the motions of her hands slow and nearly reverent. Clary lets her.

"They're me. The me that nobody sees."

Finally Izzy pulls up one of the older drawings. The heavy sheet buckles before she can straighten it; Clary had this one on the easel for an afternoon, her scene laid out across the room.

Clary should also have remembered she had it among the rest in the folder. It's all planes and textures in contrast to the stark murky lines of the others. She'd reverted to her forbidden habit of smudging the charcoal with her fingers to get a cloudy smoothness to the imprint that a curled-up body had left on the rumpled bed. Beyond the outlines of the impression, a shadow curves along the absent figure, the faint plumes of a wing lying insubstantial on the linen.

The sleeper is gone, but the winged shadow remains.

"You've been drawing angels," Izzy says. "This one looks different."

"Yeah," Clary says, busted, so what has she got to lose? She may as well perish with honor now. "She's my guardian angel. My Shadow World life coach. One of those."

"She's not actually in the picture, though." Izzy lays the drawing down on the bed.

"A girl's got to have her secrets." Clary swallows. "She—she does love attention, but she's not really the heart-on-your-sleeve type."

Izzy puts her fingertips on the paper like she's planning to flatten her hand and smear through the fabric wrinkles captured in charcoal and fixative.

"You made her more beautiful than she deserves." Her mouth curves, a mournful phantom of a smile. You could slit a throat on its exquisite line. There'd be no pain.

Clary kisses her.

To be exact: Clary reaches for Izzy, like she's tried to do over and over, and this time it ends up with her hands in Izzy's tangled hair and her mouth slanting purposefully on Izzy's soft, stunned mouth.

"Not possible," she whispers as she pulls away. She took the leap. She ruined everything. She doesn't know what she's done, but she had to make Izzy _see._

Then Izzy gives a small, sharp noise and tugs Clary back in. Her kiss is softer than Clary's first mildly bulldozing one, but no less intense. All Clary dares to do is keep her hold and keep kissing back and allow Izzy this one brazen, brilliant minute where they drop the metaphors and simply are, fumbling hands and gasping breaths and an irrepressible fizz of startled joy _._

It was probably a fantastically bad idea to round off a confession about a huge, hurtful secret with a kiss out of the blue. At this point, Clary figures, they might both be to blame.

So much for looking before she leaps, though. So much for guarding anybody's heart.

They slide to sit on the floor, their shoulders and knees pressed together. Clary clasps Izzy's hand and Izzy clings to hers, her sure soldier's grip shaking the tiniest bit.

"Well, that was a thing we did." Clary's skin prickles with warmth.

"It was," Izzy says, and pitches sideways into Clary's lap. Her knees curl loosely, her hair spilling over Clary's thigh as her bun finally gives up the fight. "Was that the day I fell asleep on your bed after breakfast?"

She means the drawing. Clary hums a _yes._

"You'd been in the lab all night, running tests on that new demon toxin."

"And you brought me coffee and a blueberry muffin because you were secretly pining for me?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Lightwood." Clary winds a long black strand around her forefinger. "I saw you in the hallway and you looked like crap, so I thought I'd take pity on you."

"Ouch. My heart." Izzy bites a chuckle in two, but the tail end escapes. "You know how to make a girl feel special."

The thing is, Clary wants to do that. Izzy deserves someone in her corner, and Clary needs—needs a harbor, she thinks, a place to make land for a while. She's gone from worry to shock to a half-cocked confession of feelings in about two hours.

"I showed you my art, didn't I? The Shadow Period of Clary Fray. You can go down in history as my sole confidant—" Clary pauses. "You know, screw that. You'll go down in history as Isabelle freaking Lightwood, genius scientist, breaking ground on some really fancy chemical property of demon goo."

Izzy collapses into laughter at that, a shameless fit of giggles that shakes down her back, taking Clary with her until they're a gasping, gleeful mess on the floor. Somehow they're still holding hands. Izzy pokes Clary's cheek with the fingers of her free hand. Her eyes are wide, shining, alive.

"I guess when I publish my breakthrough article, I'll have to thank you in the notes for letting me sneak in naps."

"You might have to," Clary agrees. _You'll make it there. We'll get through this. I'm gonna make sure of it._

Izzy hums, low and thoughtful, like she's letting herself see the possibility. Like there is a path opening, for both of them, together.

Clary decides that she can't wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on tumblr @[poemsfromthealley](https://poemsfromthealley.tumblr.com/) or twitter @[juneofthepen](https://twitter.com/juneofthepen)! Comments, kudos, twitter yelling and all such are greatly appreciated.


End file.
